Tranquil - peaceful retreat

Everyone dreams. But not all of us can give wings to our dreams. There are, however, a few.... very few... people who can. We found someone's dream in God's Own Country - where else? - in the wooded mountains of the Wayanad in the heart of a 400-acre spice and coffee estate that has a name like castanets clicking: Kuppamudi.

The name of the dream is Tranquil; and this is its story.

It's not on a tourist map. If you blink on the 130-km drive from Calicut you'll miss the turn-of. Then, if you stop at the locked gates of the estate, you'll have to wait for the guard to phone through to the Director's Bungalow for permission. Everything in Tranquil is set to at slower cadence, a more measured heartbeat.

So relax, enjoy the reassurance of being cut-off from programmed frenzy. Feel the challenge of the slightly rugged drive along paths winding through massed coffee bushes and soaring forest trees covered with pepper vines... Absorb the hushed, leaf-whispering, bird-twittering sounds of silence.

You have escaped from the hooting, jangling, blinking, clicking, ringing... glaring, virtual world of electronics into the real world of nature.

So, while you steer your slow way through this forested estate, we'll tell you how it all started. The Rajaram family, Mrs. and Mr. V. K. and their son Rajesh, own this estate, and a few other things like Hotel Ivory Tower and Ebony Restaurant in Bangalore.

When they bought Kuppamudi, they persuaded a senior planter, Victor Dey, to become a Director of this estate. The Rajarams also said that they had a dream: they wanted like-minded people to share the gracious experience of a planter's lifestyle.

In the old days, senior planters were expected to live like gentlemen, to keep great tables and fine cellars, and marry women who could work miracles like producing hot, buttered scones for tea from an old tin can and charcoal embers!

And it goes without saying that she had to keep the staff happy, run an immaculate home and create a superb garden. Jini Dey is the archetypal planter's wife: vivacious, creative, well-groomed and with a marked green thumb.

The green thumb was very much in evidence as we swept round the last bend in the road, past the green-houses, and onto the paved court that fronts the main house and the eight-roomed guest cottage. There were flowers, flowers, flowers everywhere.

And trees. And flowers and foliage exploding in the trees: orchids, creepers, ferns. And Victor, tall,,,, slightly professorial with a beard and an understated manner. And Jinni, who looks a bit like J Lo and is a tightly controlled dynamo of cosseting energy.

And Mother Norma: with hair like spun silver and the manner of a gentle dowager duchess. These were the people we were going to stay with and dine with and share experiences with during our homestay. They, and their soft-footed staff, including the inimitable Swamy, three tail-waggery dogs, and 400 acres of wooded mountains and coffee and spices, were Tranquil. But it hadn't always been so.

When Victor and Jini had first come here it was a ramshackle, rundown,,,, place. But the Rajarams told them their dream and asked them to re-create the elegant lifestyle of the old planters. That is exactly what they did. And they did it all themselves.

They engaged no designer: there is nothing glitzy and hyper about Tranquil. No architect: step aside lutyens, Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright. Tranquil is not about the philosophy of creating spaces for living'. It's about comfort, familiarity and letting nature stream into and out of the house.. Knobbly old coffee trunks were polished and became balusters.

The network of a strangler fig's roots, webbing a huge boulder, was transformed into a room-divider. A palm was allowed to thrust through the patio floor, its trunk enriched with clumps of bird's-nest fern. And there were anthuriums everywhere: red, pink, white, green-and-pink. Jinni cross-fertilises them to create new colours, brighten the interiors with their smouldering presence.

Our room was as warm and welcoming as a room in a cottage should be. We used the writing table, luxuriated in the warm shower cubicle, wrapped ourselves in soft and fluffy, scented, towels, did not switch on the TV. Their massive, and enormously friendly Alsatian, Pepper, adopted us and led us to a sun-downer on the verandah.

With ice tinkling in our glasses, we spoke of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings, and inhaled the fragrance of herbal smoke as one of the staff blew clouds of it out of a terracotta pot to keep venturesome insects at bay. It did.

We dined with the Deys as do all their guests. Most of our meals were set out on their buffet counter: we served ourselves and then sat down with the family. The Deys, like most planters, are outgoing and enjoy meeting people. When you've spent most of your lives living many miles away from your 'next door' neighbours, you value human contact more. Norma Dey, Victor's mother, has done many things.

She was a singer in Kolkata, and a radio announcer before the idiot box came into existence. Meals with the Deys in their dining room, open to the garden on two sides, were some of the most enjoyable parts of our visit. It's a wonderful feeling to relax with friends, watch the late moon rise, and then retire and let the cicadas sing us into a deep, refreshing, sleep.

The sun blossomed like a bright marigold unfolding in time-lapse, waking us. Somewhere, far away, in another world, there was a bandh called by a group of very hysterical people, but we were untouched by it. We boarded a four-wheel drive, and preceded by our three outrunners - Pepper, Goonda and Thunder - we drove on a hiking trail to the highest point in the estate.

If we had, like Hemmingway's partner on Kilimanjaro, wanted to burn the fat off our souls, we could have swung out on any one of seven walks. They ranged from the Teaser Walk of 1,330 metres to the Braveheart of 3,040 metres (partially steep to very steep).

But our souls were lean and hungry; so were our appetites. The first fed on the serenity of Tranquil; the second had a wonderful repast waiting stop a lookout point on the estate.

Here, on tables and benches built around trees, chefs offered a hot and freshly cooked breakfast. We savoured it, spiced by a breeze blowing up from a valley that seemed to extend to the far ends of the earth. And then we drove to an abandoned cottage tucked away high in the forests. It had once belonged to a group of monks.

When we entered the hall, a wind displaced section of the roof let in a shaft of sunlight which illuminated a segment of the wall. Had we come half an hour earlier, or later, we would not have seen it. But, at that moment, it was fairly clear.

Hidden under the plaster was a curious design: an inverted horseshoe shape holding a figure with its arms stretched out. Then the sunlight shifted and the emblem, or whatever it was, vanished. We returned to Tranquil, a little thoughtful.

So what could we have done the rest of that bee-strumming, dove-cooing day? We could have trekked to Ambukuthy Malai Hill. Here, the Edakal Caves were, according to legend, created by Lord Rama with his arrow, and then engraved by hunters in 2,500 BC. Or we could have driven to Muthanga National Park for some wildlife spotting, or even have had a dip in their blue swimming pool.

But all these activities were far too demanding for us. We preferred to be indolent in the little green dell which Jini had created, soothed by the sound of water trickling into a rock pool. Then we wandered around, discovering unexpected little places.

Down a spiral staircase we found an entertainment centre with indoor games. Nearby, there was an interesting souvenir corner with clocks set in intriguing pieces of wood picked up by Victor, wind bells crafted out of wood as the original wind bells were, cards made of pressed flowers.

And then there was a special honeymoon suite with its own, private, lawn. Here, honeymooners John and Emmanuelle Lucciarini had stayed. According to them, Tranquil and the Deys were:

"The most beautiful place and family of India for us. Please don't change anything.

Thank you for your beautiful attention for our honeymoon."

Obviously, there are many ways to discover the serenity of Tranquil.

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